Blame the Internet, it's gangraping the movie studios and record labels just as much, but they have the rectal fortitude to bite the pillow and moan a while longer.

The upside is that media production has been democratized. Here at HS we enjoy the fetid flotsam & jetsam of that more than most. The average traditional journalist has regrettably been the victim of this evolution.

Whatever your opinions and predictions might be, this is absolutely true. It reminds me very strongly of the gutting of the industry my father spent his working life in...He was approaching retirement age, but was jumping from job to job like a teenager, as one plant after another folded under him (and us).

People, choad is experiencing the transformation/extinction of a way of life and an environment in which he's spent much of his life. My opinion about the meaning of this, and its future effects, are different from his. Maybe we're wrong and he's right--I hope not--but either way I will not deny his right to mourn.

This patient is dying on the table. Just like the classifieds industry, which got shanked by the non-corporate radical leftwing activist CraigsList right in front of the water cooler. Then there's the directory advertising (yellow pages) business, which is like an Alzheimers sufferer, absentmindedly delivering 6+ volumes of epic treekill to my door every year. I use that shit only to sight in my pellet rifle.

One of the things that strikes me most about the decline of the newspaper industry isn't so much the loss of medium as a conduit for news - although as a former journalist I'm keenly aware of this - but I'm particularly concerned about the loss of a medium for the exchange of opinion.

Granted, the Internet thrives on opinion but generally newspapers provide a level, moderated playing field for the expression of ideas about issues on a local level. I've yet to see anything as well done online as it is in the best newspapers. When we lose newspapers, we'll lose access to measured, thoughtful editorial writing in a controlled environment with specific rules.

For all I love about the Internet, it's still too chaotic to be democratic and is often little better than a free-for-all between poo-slinging monkeys.

orangeplus wrote:

The Internet Is No Substitute for the Dying Newspaper Industry

if you're a newspaperman

In council and court rooms across the country, reporters had your back and the suits in the boardroom could fuck themselves if they didn't like it. The were working stiffs who gave a shit. Sorry, O+, they're gone now and you got nobody.

The working stiffs didn't stop, Jesus. Corporate greed took over the industry pushing out those who cared. I left my job covering county and state government because more and more responsibilities were being piled on top of me, severely undercutting my ability to fulfill my responsibilities. After I left, the paper didn't hire a new reporter to replace me, they piled all my work on top of another reporter with beats of her own to cover already.

I think you guys have a romantic notion of a profession you belonged to, but it never deserved.

As for where I get my news from, my sources are as large as the world, and with the advent of blogs, indymedia and news aggregators it's got a lot less corporate product than anything I can get from a dead tree source.

and as a final note, I'm pretty sure the general public never had the high opinion of journalism that journalists have, and it's not the public that was wrong.

I mean fuck, would it kill you all to buy a dildo? It's not like I can see your orders.

I give you my word, when my current VibeMastr9000 goes kaput (and they always do; the damn things are shoddily made because they figure you'll be too embarrassed to complain) your establishment will become the only place I will go for sexual enhancement accessories. You'll get every dime of my dildo dollar from now until I die.

George Orr wrote:

I mean fuck, would it kill you all to buy a dildo? It's not like I can see your orders.

I give you my word, when my current VibeMastr9000 goes kaput (and they always do; the damn things are shoddily made because they figure you'll be too embarrassed to complain) your establishment will become the only place I will go for sexual enhancement accessories. You'll get every dime of my dildo dollar from now until I die.

I have never known newspapers (with the exceptions of NYT and WSJ) to be other than mediums for the conveyance of department store advertisements and mild cultural propaganda. They're useful for lining the bottom of the snake-feeding tank, and that's really about it.

jesusluvspegging wrote:

I have never known newspapers (with the exceptions of NYT and WSJ) to be other than mediums for the conveyance of department store advertisements and mild cultural propaganda. They're useful for lining the bottom of the snake-feeding tank, and that's really about it.

I'd like to think that journalists are these heroic figures that challenge the 'man', selflessly dig into the dirt that is humanity, and stand up for the little guy. And indeed there may have been some of them, and perhaps there are a few yet still among us. But William Randolph, Rupert, Ted, Barry and rest of their lot have had their way with us, and the media and the public got a nice, long, and not-particularly-enjoyable-thank-you-very-much fucking by them. Now the media is exists as nothing but a conduit for slimy spin doctors and tired pitchmen.

sofaking wrote:

And Choad forgets he is the New and Improved Ultimate Supreme Ruler of the creepiest corner of the awful new medium where we publish the ugliest truths possible.

He's still a newsman.

No, not for 20 years. News writing for me was a disipline, a way of deconstructing a subject so I could understand it, or a way of teaching myself to teach myself because I couldn't afford school. The pay uniformily sucked, the hours were awful and the fear of showing my face in public after stirring a cauldren of shit always huge; exhilarating, nonstop psychodrama, too. Suck it, bitchs and deal!

There's an inscription in the lobby of the Baltimore Sun that reads, “It is really the life of kings. - HL Menken”

I have a feeling that what we're eventually going to see is the complete separation between the news gathering and news distribution industries. There is still demand out there for more or less "official" news agencies, someone you can generally trust and who actually feels embarrassed when they fuck up, but tying it to a sinking, increasingly anachronistic distribution medium is exacerbating the problem.

choad wrote:

Emmeran wrote:

Yeah - after they all bought each other. Once we devolved to a single newspaper per city they had signed their own death note.

Yup, that was the wooden stake through its heart.

So tell me, Old Farts, what was it like it the days before the one-newspaper-per-town state of affairs? I am honestly interested.

It's long been observed that the monopoly, which is what a relatively free market system tends to devolve into, is good for the business but TERRIBLE for the consumer. I would love to have dueling newspapers fightin' it out. I'd subscribe to both of them, regardless of which way they spun, and I don't BELIEVE in subscribing to newspapers.

San Francisco is, notably, moving back into multiple newspaper territory but I'm saying this with a bright bold asterisk at the end of "multiple". It has two dailies - the Chronicle, and the Examiner (which has undergone several rather odd permutations over the last decade) and in the past couple of years, two additional, very small dailies have also appeared on the scene: the City Star, and the Daily News.

The Examiner is distributed gratis, as are the Star and Daily News. Like the Examiner, both of the smaller papers are tabloids with a very strong local focus. Interestingly, with this rise of small papers distributed for free, the Chron just raised its price from 50 cents per issue to 75 cents.

There are several Chinese language dailies, as well, that cover both local and national news, but not much in the way of Spanish-language dailies. We also have two alternative weeklies which have been in engaged in a nasty battle with one another for a number of years. One, the Bay Guardian is locally owned, while the other, the San Francisco Weekly, is owned by Village Media which owns the Village Voice.

jesusluvspegging wrote:

choad wrote:

Emmeran wrote:

Yeah - after they all bought each other. Once we devolved to a single newspaper per city they had signed their own death note.

Yup, that was the wooden stake through its heart.

So tell me, Old Farts, what was it like it the days before the one-newspaper-per-town state of affairs? I am honestly interested.

It's long been observed that the monopoly, which is what a relatively free market system tends to devolve into, is good for the business but TERRIBLE for the consumer. I would love to have dueling newspapers fightin' it out. I'd subscribe to both of them, regardless of which way they spun, and I don't BELIEVE in subscribing to newspapers.

We actually still do OK here, I read the LA Times, the OC Register and the Long Beach Press Telegram. The Press-Telegram at least covers some local events, you can actually find out about things that effect you directly instead of reading about some child getting ass-raped by her parole officer 3,000 miles away.

Scotty wrote:

choad wrote:

The grim truth is that business renders most of its veterans cynical, crotchety and unemployable in any other trade. Soldiers and cops are face much the same, though lord knows those jobs are not in short supply.